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4 European LS-DYNA Users Conference Occupant III / Airbag

*MAT GAS MIXTURE, a new gas mixture

model for airbag applications

Author:
Lars Olovsson
LSTC

Correspondence:
tel/fax: +46-852 030 881
e-mail: lars@lstc.com

Keywords:
Gas mixture model, ALE, hybrid inflator, airbag

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Abstract
Recent eorts to model fully coupled CFD-airbag processes have motivated
the implementation of a gas mixture model in LS-DYNA.
The new model, *MAT GAS MIXTURE, allows the mixing of up to eight
dierent gases. It is designed to conserve the total energy of the system. Ki-
netic energy dissipated in the ALE advection process is automatically trans-
formed into heat.
The article serves as a description of the gas mixture model and of the
accompanying keyword commands.

Introduction
Occupant safety groups are requesting better tools for airbag deployment
simulations. A uniform pressure assumption is simply not accurate enough
when analysing certain out of position situations.
To better capture the signicant mechanisms in the incipient stage of the
deployment process, one might need to explicitly model the gas ow and
its interaction with the airbag fabric. LSTC is working on improving the
necessary capabilities for such analyses to be carried out on a production
basis.
The approach suggested by LSTC is to model the gas ow with an Eu-
lerian or ALE formulation. The gas ow can be coupled to a Lagrangian
airbag model through a uid-structure interaction algorithm.
*MAT GAS MIXTURE has been developed for this purpose. It is a gas
mixture model for explicit Eulerian and ALE simulations. The mixing is
necessary for a good description of the gas when using hybrid inators.

Theory
The only material property constants of *MAT GAS MIXTURE are heat
capacities at constant volume, Cvi , i [1..N ], and at constant pressure, Cpi , i
[1..N ] . N 8 is the total number of gas species in the mixture.

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State Variables
The state variables are the densities of the dierent gas species, i , i [1..N ],
and the specic internal energy, e.

Total Pressure
The static temperature, T , at a point is dened as

e
T = (1)


N
i Cvi
i=1

The total pressure, p, is dened as the sum of partial pressures from the
dierent gas species in the mixture, pi .

N
p= pi (2)
i=1

where

 
pi = i Cpi Cvi T
(3)

Energy Conservation
The ALE solver in LS-DYNA is dissipative. The numerical schemes are
designed to preserve the momentum, but not the kinetic energy. Some energy
is lost in the advection.
By not keeping the energy balance, one can expect to nally end up with
a too low gas pressure.
The amount of dissipated kinetic energy can be computed at each ele-
ment. In *MAT GAS MIXTURE the dissipated kinetic energy is automati-
cally transformed into heat. In this way the energy conservation is satised.
It is a numerical trick and, depending on application, its legitimacy can be
questioned.

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Keyword Commands
*MAT GAS MIXTURE and *INITIAL GAS MIXTURE are used to dene
the gas properties and its initial state, respectively.
For airbag application, the idea is to model the inators as sets of point
sources. The point sources and can be generated with the command *SEC-
TION POINT SOURCE MIXTURE. This keyword and it functionalities are
still under development and it is not included in the ocial ls970 release.

*MAT GAS MIXTURE

Card 1 to 3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
MID
Cv1 Cv2 Cv3 Cv4 Cv5 Cv6 Cv7 Cv8
Cp1 Cp2 Cp3 Cp4 Cp5 Cp6 Cp7 Cp8

MID Material ID
Cv1 Cv8 Heat capacity at constant volume for up to 8 dierent gases.
Cp1 Cp8 Heat capacity at constant pressure for up to 8 dierent gases.

*INITIAL GAS MIXTURE

Card 1 to 2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
SID STYPE MMGID T0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

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SID Set ID
STYPE Set type
Eq.0 - part set
Eq.1 - part
MMGID Multi-material group ID that is to be initialized
T0 Initial static temperature of the gas mixture
10 80 Initial densities of up to 8 dierent gas species.

*SECTION POINT SOURCE MIXTURE

Card 1 to 2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
SECID LCT LCV NLC1 NLC2 NLC3
LCM1 LCM2 LCM3 LCM4 LCM5 LCM6 LCM7 LCM8

Card 3, 4...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
NID VID AREA

SECID Section ID
LCT Stagnation temperature load curve ID
LCV Inlet ow velocity load curve
NLC1- Node IDs dening a local coordinate system. If dened, the
NLC3 vectors dening the inlet ow direction follow the rotation of
this system.
LCM1- Mass ow rate load curves for up to eight dierent gas species
LCM8 (see *MAT GAS MIXTURE).
NID Node ID dening the location of the point source
VID Vector ID dening the inlet ow direction in a local coordinate
system dened by NID1-NID3. If NID1-NID3 are not dened,
the vector is assumed to be dened in the global coordinate
system.
AREA Point source orice area

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Tank Test
*MAT GAS MIXTURE has been benchmarked in a tank test simulation.
The tank pressure time history was compared to results obtained with an
*AIRBAG HYBRID control volume approach.
The details of the models are not presented in this article. However, the
complete input decks can be obtained from LSTCs ftp site. Please contact
the author for downloading instructions.

Control Volume Model

A cubic 27dm3 tank was modeled with shell elements. The tank was lled
with a mixture of three dierent inator gases. The keyword input dening
he inator characteristics are listed below.

*AIRBAG HYBRID
1, 1
293.0, 1.013E-04, 1.2E-09, 8.31, 1.0
0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
0, 0, 4
$ Air
0, 0, 0, 0.029, 1.0, 27.27
0
$ Inflator gas 1
2, 1, 0, 0.045, 0.0, 30.00
0
$ Inflator gas 2
3, 1, 0, 0.018, 0.0, 45.00
0
$ Inflator gas 3
4, 1, 0, 0.028, 0.0, 30.00
0
$ Inlet temperature curve
*DEFINE CURVE
1
0.0, 800.0
100.0, 800.0

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$ Mass flow rate curves

*DEFINE CURVE
2
0.0, 0.0
10.0, 3.0e-4
50.0, 0.0
*DEFINE CURVE
3
0.0, 0.0
10.0, 0.0
20.0, 3.0e-4
50.0, 0.0
*DEFINE CURVE
4
0.0, 0.0
20.0, 0.0
30.0, 3.0e-4
50.0, 0.0
*END

Eulerian Model
In the Eulerian model, the 27dm3 tank was embedded in a mesh of 303030
Eulerian elements. The keywords necessary for the denition of the inator
characteristics are presented below.

$ Heat capacities of air and inflator gases

*MAT GAS MIXTURE
1
654.47, 482.00, 2038.30, 774.64
941.32, 666.67, 2500.00, 1071.40
$ Tank initially filled with air
*INITIAL GAS MIXTURE
1, 1, 1, 293.0
1.2E-09

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$ Point sources
*SECTION POINT SOURCE MIXTURE
2, 1, 0, 5
0, 2, 3, 4
100001, 1, 25.0
100002, 1, 25.0
100003, 1, 25.0
100004, 1, 25.0
$ Flow direction
*DEFINE VECTOR
1, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
$ Location of point sources
*NODE
100001, 30.0, 180.0, 180.0, 7
100002, 30.0, 220.0, 180.0, 7
100003, 30.0, 180.0, 220.0, 7
100004, 30.0, 220.0, 220.0, 7
$ Flow velocity
*DEFINE CURVE
5
0.0, 500.0
100.0, 500.0

Result
Figure 1 shows the tank pressure time histories obtained with the two dif-
ferent models. The dierence in results is related to numerical errors in the
uid-structure interaction. The uid-structure interaction algorithm tends
to destroy the perfect energy balance. Ongoing development at LSTC is
currently dealing with this problem.

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Figure 1: Pressure time history in two dierent tank test simulations.

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